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5 JANUARY 2015 VOLUME 16 ISSUE 1

Media Coverage

  • US guidelines on prevention with people living with HIV now emphasise engagement with care, HIV treatment and social factors

    The American public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published new recommendations on the HIV prevention interventions and advice that should be offered to people who are HIV positive....Whereas previous guidelines were clearly focused on the individual’s knowledge and behaviour, the new recommendations take greater account of social and structural factors as well as the profound impact that antiretrovirals have on HIV transmission....
    January 5, 2015
    AIDSmap

  • PrEP: A new tool for HIV prevention

    Taking a preventative drug before exposure to bacteria, viruses or parasites is not a new concept. It is called pre-exposure prophylaxis. For example, if you travel to an area where infection with malaria is common, you can take malaria medication before and during travel to prevent getting infected if bitten by a mosquito carrying the malaria parasite. Pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV (PrEP) is a new HIV prevention concept in which people who do not have HIV infection take a daily dose of an HIV antiretroviral (usually TRUVADA) to reduce their risk of becoming infected.
    January 5, 2015
    PrEP
    Gay News Network

  • Larry Corey, cofounder of 2014 top biotech Juno: “It’s No Outlier”

    Xconomy doesn’t have annual awards (the X-ies, anyone?), but I don’t have any hesitation naming Juno Therapeutics the biotech company of the year for 2014. This is neither a prediction of future success nor an endorsement. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment that hands-down, Juno was the most atypical biotech I’ve seen in years, perhaps ever.
     
    January 5, 2015
    Xconomy

  • Bill and Melinda Gates are spending their money the wrong way, critics say

    Over the past decade, aid groups such as the Bill and Melinda GatesFoundation have spent tens of billions of dollars battling deadly infectious diseases. Some public health experts want them to stop.
     
    January 5, 2015
    Bloomberg

  • Adebisi Alimi: Gay Nigerian actor puts his sexuality in the spotlight

    [Adebisi] Alimi's acting career was just starting to take off when his sexuality stole the spotlight. The student newspaper at University of Lagos, where he was studying theater, threatened to publish a photo of him with his then-boyfriend. So Alimi beat them to the punch. He went on "New Dawn with Funmi," one of the most popular talk shows in Nigeria, and challenged a long-held belief that homosexuality was brought to Africa by white colonizers. That was also the year Alimi was diagnosed with HIV.
     
    January 5, 2015
    National Public Radio

  • The year ahead in science

    Could this be the year of the AIDS vaccine? Microbiologists say that new insights into the structure of HIV's protein spikes - the weapons the virus uses to enter host cells - have raised hopes for a vaccine. If they are right, it would be a major victory against the virus that causes AIDS...."Personally, working in the HIV vaccine field for 16 years, I have never been so positive," said Rogier Sanders, a Cornell University microbiologist.
    January 4, 2015
    The Age

  • New York City’s public health ‘warrior’ revamps HIV messaging

    Beneath Grand Central Station, the doors of a downtown 6 train open to reveal one of the New York City Department of Health's newest public service announcements: A simple poster with two young men embracing tenderly urges riders to take an HIV test.

    January 4, 2015
    Al Jazeera

  • Botswana President concerned over ART cost

    Botswana's President Ian Khama on Thursday expressed concern over the escalating cost of the anti-retroviral therapy....Whilst as a nation [Botswana] is committed to providing such care, support and treatment, President Khama lamented that the escalating cost is primarily due to the increasing number of people who are living with the virus. In 2013, Botswana's HIV and Aids prevalence rate was 18,5 percent compared to 17,6 percent in 2008.
    January 3, 2015
    Bulawayo24

  • Overcoming HIV obstacles in 2015

    The head of a prominent HIV/AIDS advocacy organization says 2015 will be a year of great opportunities and great challenges....Mitchell Warren [executive director of AVAC] said one challenge will be to translate recent scientific advances into practice. “This is a year that will define the AIDS response....,truly a point at which we will know if we are on the right track to ever ending this epidemic, or if we continue to muddle through year by year hoping we do the right things, but not knowing for sure,” he said.
    January 1, 2015
    Voice of America

  • Anti-AIDS medicine project likely to take off at Sonagachi

    Asia's largest red light zone, Sonagachi is likely to be the first among such areas in the country to roll out an experimental project under which sex-workers will be administered medicine to prevent HIV infection. Under the project 'Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis' (PrEP), regular medicine would be given to an HIV-negative sex worker engaged in sex with an HIV-positive person, a senior official of an NGO working for the welfare of sex-workers said.
    January 1, 2015
    PrEP
    The Economic Times

  • An audience with Wayne Koff

    The success rate for vaccines is even lower than for biopharmaceutical drugs, by some accounts. In an attempt to turn things around and address long-standing vaccinology problems, Wayne Koff, Chief Scientific Officer at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), and colleagues proposed a Human Vaccines Project in 2013. Top vaccinologists met to outline a scientific approach and business strategy in 2014, and the Human Vaccines Project could now launch by this summer, Koff tells Asher Mullard.

    December 31, 2014
    Nature Reviews Drug Discovery

  • Year in review: HIV-AIDS

    The year in HIV was marked by...the loss of several HIV activists in the skies over Ukraine, including Joep Lange, a former president of the International AIDS Society. It can be argued that the turn-around in the pandemic arose, at least in part, from Lange's insistence that antiretroviral medication should -- and could -- be available in remote places....The year was also marked by some important clinical findings.
    December 30, 2014
    MedPage Today

  • Are placebos ethical in Ebola trials?

    As more potential treatments for Ebola become available, there is increasing debate about the best clinical trial design to show benefit....Last month’s Advancing Ethical Research meeting, sponsored by Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIMR), shifted my thinking on this....[C]ompelling arguments for a placebo control in Ebola vaccine trials came from Drs. Anthony Fauci, of the NIH, and Walter Straus, of Merck. They both reminded us of the STEP HIV vaccine trial.... 
    December 30, 2014
    Forbes

  • HIV transmission documented between actors during adult film shoot

    The California Department of Public Health [CDPH] has reported that an adult entertainment film actor recently became infected with HIV and likely spread the infection to another male actor during a film shoot. “Public health investigation and laboratory results provide very strong evidence that the actor transmitted HIV to the other actor as a result of unprotected sex during the film shoot,” the CDPH Occupational Health Branch stated in a health alert.
    December 30, 2014
    Healio

  • NIH awards grant for HIV treatment monitoring, analysis

    The NIH has awarded a $3.5 million grant to researchers at Brown University for the monitoring and analysis of clinical HIV treatment data as a means to improve care, according to a press release. The researchers will work with AMPATH, an HIV care program based in Eldoret, Kenya, to develop treatment methods, software and lab technologies based on currently available clinical data.
    December 30, 2014
    Healio

  • Gilead, Janssen expand HIV combo collaborations

    Janssen R&D Ireland and Gilead Sciences have expanded two existing HIV drug collaborations through agreements to develop new once-daily HIV tablets, the companies said today in separate announcements. The companies agreed to expand a 2009 collaboration by developing a Phase III-ready HIV treatment that will combine Gilead’s tenofovir alafenamide (TAF) and emtricitabine, and Janssen’s rilpivirine.
    December 29, 2014
    Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News

  • Aspen, Cipla win share of $860 mln S.Africa AIDS drug tender

    South Africa will spend 10 billion rand ($860 million) between 2015 and 2017 on life-prolonging HIV/AIDS treatment drugs, health authorities said Wednesday....The health department selected four pharmaceutical companies, including Africa's biggest generic drugmaker Aspen Pharmacare, to make and supply the drugs to public hospitals. Aspen was awarded 2.5 billion rand ($214 million), India's Cipla Ltd 2 billion rand, US-based Mylan 2.8 billion rand and unlisted South African firm Sonke 3 billion rand.
     
    December 24, 2014
    Fierce Pharma

  • India slashes health budget, already one of the world's lowest

    The Indian government has ordered a cut of nearly 20 percent in its 2014/15 healthcare budget due to fiscal strains, putting at risk key disease control initiatives in a country whose public spending on health is already among the lowest in the world....In addition to the healthcare budget, the finance ministry has also ordered a spending cut for India's HIV/AIDS programme by about 30 percent to 13 billion rupees ($205.4 million).
    December 23, 2014
    Reuters

  • FDA easing ban on gays, to let some give blood

    The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that it would scrap a decades-old lifetime prohibition on blood donation by gay and bisexual men, a major stride toward ending what many had seen as a national policy of discrimination. However, the agency will continue to ban men who have had sex with a man in the last year,...a move that frustrated rights groups that were pushing for the ban to be removed entirely....
    December 23, 2014
    New York Times

Published Research

  • Home-based versus mobile clinic HIV testing and counseling in rural Lesotho: a cluster-randomized trial

    This study demonstrates that both home-based testing and counseling (HB-HTC) and mobile-clinic testing and counseling (MC-HTC) can achieve high uptake of HTC. HB-HTC was better in reaching children, individuals who had never tested before, and men, while MC-HTC detected more new HIV infections. The low rate of linkage to care after a positive HIV test warrants future consideration of combining community-based HTC approaches with strategies to improve linkage to care.
    January 5, 2015
    PLoS Med

  • A fierce competition to attack HIV

    The Holy Grail in the HIV field is a protective vaccine. However, because HIV mutates rapidly, it can escape from vaccine-elicited antibodies. Nevertheless, some HIV-positive individuals harbor antibodies that HIV cannot escape from very easily, so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs). McGuire et al. asked why these bNAbs don't win out over their more narrow brethren (nNAbs) early after infection.
    January 5, 2015
    Science

  • Multipurpose prevention technologies for reproductive and sexual health

    Global statistics on unplanned pregnancies, abortions and STIs show that unprotected sex is still widely practised. More needs to be done to provide women and men with a wider choice of convenient protective options. To address this need, international efforts are focusing on developing multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) that address two or more indications simultaneously.
    January 5, 2015
    Reproductive Health Matters

  • HIV vaccines should avoid viral target cells, primate model study suggests

    Vaccines designed to protect against HIV can backfire and lead to increased rates of infection. This unfortunate effect has been seen in more than one vaccine clinical trial. Scientists at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have newly published results [in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists] that support a straightforward explanation for the backfire effect: vaccination may increase the number of immune cells that serve as viral targets....
    January 5, 2015
    Science Daily

  • Willingness to participate in future HIV prevention trials in Beira, Mozambique

    In preparation for trials of new HIV prevention methods, willingness to participate (WTP) was assessed in Beira, Mozambique. A totla of 1 019 women participating in an HIV incidence study, and 97 men participating in a separate WTP survey, were interviewed. When comparing the answers to questions that were identical in the two studies, WTP was higher among women than men for all prevention methods. 

    January 5, 2015
    African Journal of AIDS Research

  • Global epidemiology of HIV among female sex workers: influence of structural determinants

    We used a deterministic transmission model to simulate potential HIV infections averted through structural changes in regions with concentrated and generalised epidemics, and high HIV prevalence among female sex workers [FSW]. This modelling suggested that elimination of sexual violence alone could avert 17% of HIV infections in Kenya and 20% in Canada....Decriminalisation of sex work would have the greatest effect on the course of HIV epidemics across all settings.
    January 3, 2015
    Lancet

  • Dispelling myths about sex workers and HIV

    Sex work might or might not be the oldest profession, but it has existed for millennia across all continents and cultures. Nevertheless, myths about sex work and sex workers persist (panel). These myths can denigrate, devalue, and marginalise sex workers. Some widely held and unsupported views hinder HIV responses, driving sex workers away from already scarce HIV prevention and treatment services. Here, we aim to dispel the most harmful of these myths with evidence-based literature.
    January 3, 2015
    Lancet

  • Perspectives on HIV prevention among urban black women: a potential role for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis.

    Most women expressed interest in PrEP, as many reported condom failure concerns. Most women preferred a pill formulation to intravaginal gel because of greater perceived privacy and concerns about vaginal side effects and gel leakage. Women who had taken pills previously advocated daily dosing and indicated adherence concerns about episodic or post-coital PrEP. Many women desired prophylactic strategies that included partner testing.
    December 31, 2014
    PrEP
    AIDS Patient Care and STDs

  • MSM may need greater HPV vaccine protection

    Interview with Huachun Zou, University of Melbourne: In this paper we aimed to provide estimates for the site specific incidence of HPV and to use this to estimate the probability of transmission per partner in a cohort of very young MSM aged 16 to 20 years. These data will assist governments in deciding what HPV vaccination strategy is likely to be the most effective in MSM.
    December 30, 2014
    HPV Vaccines
    MedicalResearch.com

  • Molecules seen binding to HIV-1's protective capsule, blocking infection

    "It's still a matter of debate at what point the capsid [which surrounds the HIV-1 genome] falls apart in HIV-1 infection of cells," said Dmitri Ivanov, senior author on a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that offers clues about HIV-1 capsid disassembly...."We think that this process can be targeted for therapeutic purposes in HIV-1 infections," Dr. Ivanov said.

    December 30, 2014
    Science Daily

  • Knowledge, attitudes, and likelihood of pre-exosure prophylaxis (PrEP) use among US women at risk of acquiring HIV

    We conducted a qualitative focus group (FG) study with 144 at-risk women in six US cities between July and September 2013.... Findings suggest that US women view PrEP as an important prevention option, assuming side effects and the cost to the consumer are minimal, the efficacy of the drug is reasonable, and PrEP is delivered by trusted providers in trusted venues.
    December 16, 2014
    AIDS Patient Care and STDs

Announcements

  • Happy New Year!

    AVAC would like to wish our advocates and friends from across the globe a Happy New Year! The Weekly NewsDigest will return to its regularly scheduled delivery this Friday.

    Here's to much success this New Year!

    January 5, 2015